As a child growing up in the Cleveland, Ohio area, a favorite expedition was with my Dad and Uncle Frank to Lake Erie’s waterfront. We’d fish for whatever might be biting, which at that time tended to be yellow perch and the now extinct blue pike. Since I left for college in New Jersey and then settled in California, I’ve had zero days of fishing on Lake Erie or any other of the Great Lakes. But from popular news accounts, family, and friends, I was aware of some of the changing identities of the lakes’ major personalities, such as the invasive zebra mussel and the stocked coho and chinook salmon as well as the threatening Asian Carp.

Each of the aforementioned non-natives are discussed, as well as others in The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan, a reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. It’s a lively, very well written survey of the non-native creatures of the Great Lakes, along with comments on related scientific research and politics. It could be called a natural history book, even though the non-native species are uniformly introduced through man’s actions, some intentional, some not.

The subject of non-native species in the Great Lakes is non-trivial, as they’ve cost utilities, municipalities, former commercial fishermen, and other lake users $billions in lost income, cleanup, increased maintenance, re-engineering, etc. And the costs aren’t confined to the Great Lakes – zebra and quagga mussels are working their way into the U.S. west, fouling water and inconveniencing boaters to the tune of many $ millions.

In short, Egan’s book is an intelligent, balanced, and highly readable report on many of the more popular or vexing inhabitants of the Great Lakes.

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I found The Jersey Brothers by Sally Mott Egan especially hard to put down. It’s the story of “a missing naval officer in the Pacific and the quest to bring him home.”

What a story it is! History, family, and the realities of war are all present as the author tells the parallel paths of 3 brothers from New Jersey who served in the Navy during World War II. Researched at 20 venues including the Philippines and England, it’s a story both well constructed and well written. The author, one of the protagonist’s daughters, spent years and many dollars traveling and researching to unravel the WWII paths of the brothers, especially that of the youngest, who was taken as a Japanese prisoner just a few weeks after Pearl Harbor. Details in this book, especially of the imprisoned brother, confirm that yes, “War is Hell.”

The book includes extensive notes documenting the author’s original research which included the review of a significant amount of privately held correspondence, a well curated subset of which illuminates the narrative. Egan, a first time author, has written a book certain to take a place on many readers’ shelves as a favorite.

Endnote: The Jersey Brothers came to my attention by way of a New York Times article published a few days after a Navy reunion I attended and which sparked interest in the Battle of Midway and WWII. The reunion was in San Diego of Vietnam-era officers who served on the USS Saint Paul, and included a day-long visit on the excellent USS Midway Museum as well as a visit to the San Diego Maritime Museum and its Swift Boats at War in Vietnam exhibit, both worthwhile for any San Diego visitor.

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Author’s note: This post was written several months ago but not posted immediately because I wanted to “sleep on it.” Now, given the rather rude firing of FBI director Comey a couple days ago and the related spin, I decided this country’s admin is a lost cause so it was time to press “publish.”

In September, 2015, I published a blog entry which discussed Hillary Clinton’s email situation and conveyed my disapproval. She was the favored candidate for the Democratic party’s candidate for president, but that race was far from over. I concluded that blog entry with the statement:

“We don’t need public servants who choose to disregard this country’s laws and policy with impunity and then blatantly and repeatedly make misleading statements or lie.”

Now that well over a year has passed since my September, 2015, blog post and Donald Trump is has been elected our president, it seems appropriate re-visit my assertion that we don’t need lying public servants.

And, sadly, while Clinton’s misleading (at best) statements were very irritating to this writer, they look nearly harmless and almost insignificant when compared with Trump’s erroneous statements.

Many journalists and others have commented on and/or cataloged Trump’s inaccurate statements so I won’t attempt to inventory or rank them. Instead I’ll just point the reader to a selection of websites & articles on the subject that I’ve found insightful or memorable:

Fact-checkers: These sites strive to be objective analysts of politicians’ public statements:

The Washington Post’s Factchecker column asserts it is “The Truth Behind The Rhetoric.” Led by columnist Glenn Kessler, it awards up to 4 Pinocchio noses depending on the size of the “whopper.” Background on Kessler and the grading scale is here.

Opinions: Following are essays on Trump and his propensity to bullshit and lie:

Harry Frankfurt, a Princeton philosophy professor and author of the influential essay On Bullshit, wrote in Time magazine about Trump: “It is disturbing to find an important political figure who indulges freely both in lies and in bullshit. What is perhaps even more deeply disturbing is to discover an important segment of our population responding to so incorrigibly dishonest a person with such pervasively enthusiastic acceptance.”

An opinion column, “The Danger of Trump’s Constant Lying” by Sam Waterston: “By the frequency of his lying, Trump has revealed a truth …regular and habitual lying is an existential threat to us, to our institutions, our memories, our understanding of now and of the future, to the great American democratic experiment, and to the planet.”

In what was the match that lit the fuse for this post, in his New York Times Op-ed column Nobel prizewinner Paul Krugman recently came down harder than ever on Trump. Annoyed with journalists who found Trump’s recent (2/28/17) speech to congress “presidential,” in the recent post he labeled Trump “the most dishonest man ever to hold high office in America.”

Spin, fib, bullshit, or lie? I understand spin is going to happen whether we like it or not, so there’s not much use in getting worked up about it. An occasional Fib doesn’t bother me much and, in some circumstances, may serve a worthwhile purpose. Bullshit and lies from a president are more problematic. And I suspect the reputation he’s developed will be a very big problem if/when there’s a crisis .

With hindsight and given today’s circumstances, it’s clear more than ever that “We don’t need public servants who lie.”

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While in San Francisco last week I attended the second evening’s program of the Banff Mountain Film Festival’s World Tour. The tour features a diverse selection of 18 films screened at the November, 2016, festival in Banff.

San Francisco’s interest in the World Tour has increased steadily and two nights of programming at the large Palace of Fine Arts auditorium (600+ seats) now sell out (at $20/ticket) routinely. In the Bay Area the World Tour also screens for two evenings in San Rafael, Berkeley, and Redwood City, as it does in 15 other California locations.

I was mildly disappointed with the night #2 program of 9 films, most of which were generally mediocre. Edited down action films with river kayaking and skiing generally reminded one of films screened in earlier years; that is to say, nothing new. Films with a story line were generally uninteresting and/or so self-indulgent they were off-putting.

Nonetheless, I’d like to mention 4 films that are worth checking out.

The award for Best Short Film at the 2016 Festival went to Northbound, a beautifully filmed skateboarding film in the Norwegian arctic. It was done in winter at the beach so the skateboarders are doing their thing on frozen sand. Scenic and spare, it’s different. (But it was also vaguely familiar since I sensed I’d seen some of the footage in this film before at another festival, either in an earlier cut or in an earlier film by the same shop. I guess that’s ok.)

An unusual and most pleasing film is Danny MacAskill’s Wee Day Out. MacAskill is a bicyclist and this small film follows him for 6 minutes as he rides through a Scotland landscape with various obstacles. You’ll like it. Read lots more on its background here.

Danny MacAskill!

At 25 minutes, The Super Salmon discusses a proposed dam for hydroelectric power on Alaska’s Susitna River. It’s a story with interesting characters and footage, but one that is somewhat ambiguous, or at least unclear, on the merits and costs of the dam.

Susitna River flows south into Cook Inlet

Sidebar: As I had often traveled along the Susitna, to and from Denali Education Center and Anchorage, the film was a good reminder that I should get back up there again soon!

Finally, the Eastern side of California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range was the backdrop for The Perfect Flight, a very nice short on an abandoned falcon chick and its companion, Shawn Hayes of Riverside, CA. Through his activities as the bird’s guardian and coach, Mr. Hayes has become a leading expert on falconry. He made a brief but memorable appearance, a highlight of the evening.

In summary, the World Tour offered footage on diverse, outdoor subjects, and several of the films were quite good.

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Earlier this month I attended the 13th annual San Francisco International Ocean Film Festival. I’ve been to almost every program of every festival and am pleased to say the festival production and this year’s overall film quality were the best yet. It also appeared that attendance was the highest yet. That is all plus.

On the other hand, I had the feeling of deja vu, that the festival was/is in a bit of a rut – or, said another way, that the festival was in many ways a repeat of years past – even though none of the films had been screened at a previous festival. Perhaps there are only a finite number of distinctive ways to approach many of the festival’s perennial subjects such as plastics, overfishing, shark finning, etc. If so, perhaps no matter how talented the filmmakers, many of the films are or become indistinguishable and forgotten. To the extent that is true the festival’s progress may well be stymied unless it freshens its content and evolves its format.

Only a few of us have been to all festivals, so by definition any criticism I may have is that of an outlier. Nonetheless, there are other repeat attendees and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear they have similar observations. In a future post I’ll offer some ideas on how the festival could be improved.

There were two especially noteworthy films:

The Weekend Sailor is a 75 minute film on the first Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race in 1973. This film features spectacular archival footage as well as recent interviews with several of the crew members. A “plot twist” was that the yacht Sayula II’s captain/owner and several of its crew were utter novices when it came to ocean racing – in stark contrast to the other competitors.

Crew of the Sayula II

Supplementing the race’s time line and with a light touch, the film made clear the captain had truly outstanding leadership skills. He, a successful Mexican businessman, could obviously run a lot of things very, very well.

It was a difficult race – around the world in 4 legs (3 ports of call plus the finish) using one sailboat. Big swells, fright, dismasting, and death were all in evidence, as well as a compelling story with ample humor. The Whitbread is now known as the Volvo Ocean Race and continues to be one of sailing’s most formidable challenges.

Legendary sailor/adventurer/connector Anthony Sandberg emceed the film program and concurs that this is one of the best sailing films ever. The program was seriously enhanced with the presence of and enthusiastic Q & A participation by the filmmaker and several crew members.

A second personal favorite is Ocean Driven, a 55 minute film with plenty of beautiful surfing footage from around the world. But this film is much more than eye candy as it deftly conveys the passion of one big wave surfer, Chris Bertish. After more than a decade of assiduously striving for an invitation to the Maverick’s Big Wave Invitational, he finally received the call. But it came just after a crippling injury that clearly posed a major threat to his participation. He persevered, surfed in the Invitational, and won the contest. “Totally awesome.”

Dropping into Mavericks

Bertish made a quick trip to the festival from his home in South Africa and led a spirited Q & A session. His was the last film of the last film program, so many attendees, filmmakers, and festival volunteers worked their way over to the highly anticipated festival wrap party hosted by and at the Dolphin Club.

Several short films were quite good, but more noteworthy are three longer films that also stood apart. Two conveyed weather changes near the poles, while the third was a unique, meditative exploration of the polar region.

“Sila” is the weather, sky, and “all that is out there.” Sila and the Gatekeepers of the Arctic is a 65 minute restrained, well filmed and edited film featuring a small community of Inuit who are settled, for the time being, 1200 miles north of the Arctic Circle. But things are changing as the dissipation of polar ice affects everyones’ lifestyles, which this film conveys quite vividly and humanely.

Siorapaluk, Greenland – pop 68 (2010)

Created and produced by Rutgers University students, teachers, and staff, Arctic Edge: 70 Degrees South is an entertaining and educational 72 minute look at the changes in the Antarctic as observed and cataloged by the scientists on the Palmer Peninsula working on the National Science Foundation’s Long Term Ecological Research project. Heavy enough but not overburdened with science and using beautiful footage along with animation to convey ideas, this film offers meaningful evidence that the climate is indeed changing.

Speechless – the Polar Realm is a 44 minute montage of precisely filmed and edited, often unusual, mostly beautiful footage of the polar regions and their native inhabitants. Without a narrator or talking heads, aural stimulation is provided by the original instrumental music score. A very memorable statement, the film wears well and could be watched again.

All fine films, the three polar films mentioned offer a variety of subject matter and cinematic approaches.

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In early September we lost William “Zeke” Grader, Jr., a tireless and impactful advocate of free flowing rivers, wild salmon, and family fishermen. With a passion for a healthy environment, especially for the fish, Zeke was an energetic, articulate, and expert spokesman on the subjects he cared about.

In the months before his passing, Zeke was the subject of various accolades, newspaper articles, congressional recognition, etc. While his many roles and accomplishments have been described with respect and affection by others, and I’ll touch on them below, what maybe overlooked is that Zeke was one of San Francisco’s entrepreneurs in that he took the lead from an early stage on many environmental initiatives.

Raised on the north coast of California, Zeke had commercial fishing in his life from youth. After serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, he attended law school at University of San Francisco; then, upon passing the bar and in lieu of pursuing a traditional career in the law, Zeke chose to take the role of Executive Director of the newly formed, fledgling Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations (PCFFA), a federation of 25 port and fishermen’s marketing associations from San Diego to Alaska, the largest trade association of commercial fishermen on the west coast. Zeke led that non-profit from his hiring in the mid 1970’s until earlier this year and through it took on many fish habitat and other environmental issues.

In addition to leading PCFFA, in 1992 he founded the non-profit The Institute for Fisheries Resources, whose mission is “to protect the natural resource bounty of the Pacific Ocean along the western seaboard of North America, including Alaska and Hawaii.” Zeke served as Executive Director of IFR until earlier this year.

“With Zeke at the helm, the PCFFA took a leading role in crafting important state and federal legislation to preserve the coastal fishing industry. Zeke lobbied strongly for California’s 1988 Salmon, Steelhead Trout, and Anadromous Fisheries Program Act, which called for a statewide salmon conservation plan to double the present numbers of wild salmon. He pushed for modernization of the federal Fishery Conservation and Management Act, litigated to expedite water quality restoration under the federal Clean Water Act, and fought for protections of fishing grounds by organizing for the prevention and clean-up of petroleum spills. In 1988, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration honored Zeke Grader with its prominent Environmental Hero award. For many Zeke has been a hero over many decades and his tireless efforts to protect the wild California Coast have ensured the present vitality of our fishing communities.”

I met Zeke around 2003 as I began to pursue the idea of a film festival based on films related to the ocean. When I dropped in as an unannounced visitor to his waterfront office (whose busy appearance reminded me of mine!), Zeke was friendly and encouraging. Over the next several years, as the festival launched and gained momentum, Zeke was there – He willingly took on the role of behind the scenes point person for fresh fish, ensuring and subsidizing (with his fishing colleagues) a supply of super fresh seafood for several of the festival’s opening receptions, which were important fundraisers and festival community building events.

I’ll always remember Zeke’s steady outlook and admire his commitment and willingness to work on issues he believed in with or without public recognition. He was a person I am glad to have known and wish I’d have known better.

Zeke just a few steps from his office.

The following articles offer additional insights into Zeke and his large presence in the non-industrial fishing industry:

Finally, A 2013 talk by Zeke at a symposium on the 5th anniversary of California’s designation of marine protected areas is here:

Published on March 17, 2013, this clip is part of a series of video presentations from the State of the California Central Coast symposium, held February 27 – March 1, 2013 in Monterey, CA. The symposium focused on the monitoring and management of California’s Central Coast regional network of marine protected areas (MPAs). The presentations and panel discussions shared ecological and socioeconomic results from the first five years of MPA monitoring in the region and new approaches for MPA implementation. The results are accessible in an ‘e-book’ format that includes inteactive graphs, videos and more on http://www.oceanspaces.org. The symposium was convened by California Ocean Science Trust and MPA Monitoring Enterprise, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, California Fish and Game Commission, and the California Ocean Protection Council.

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This is Part 2 of a recap of the shorts shown at MountainFilm in Mill Valley in mid September. Shorts varied in length from under 2 minutes to 29 minutes and featured people and their endeavors on mountains, in the surf and much in between. Some films featured nature, others contoured a human’s spirit. The group was a subset of the shorts screened in Telluride at the MountainFilm Festival over Memorial Day weekend, and you can find a comprehensive list of those films here.

Mill Valley is a mountain biking nexus and bicycle themed shorts were abundant:

The Coast, both scenic and thoughtful, is 6 minutes of therapy, courtesy of the ocean.

The Fisherman’s Son, 29 min. Born and raised at Punta de Lobos, Chile, Ramón Navarro found his passion riding the biggest waves on the planet. But his accomplishments in giant surf are just one part of a bigger vision to protect the culture and environment of the Chilean coast. By Patagonia and quite good.

Over the past decade or so, the proliferation of devices and software to “catch the moment” has led to an explosion in the quantity and quality of geo-based shorts. Those noted above are worth a look as are others mentioned elsewhere on this website and accessible from https://kristjake.com/category/books-films/page/2/.

Over the past few years Mountainfilm has advanced rapidly and its touring program now includes 150 or sites around the world. Since Banff Mountain Film Fest’s traveling program now involves over 600 sites, the growth and reach of these festivals make it clear there is significant audience demand for what they’re offering, film programming that is geo-based which almost always features a human actor, protagonist, or story.

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Each MountainFilm in Mill Valley program had a feature film along with at least two short films; over the 9 film programs, more than 30 shorts were shown. Shorts varied in length from under 2 minutes to 29 minutes and featured people and their endeavors on mountains, the surf and much in between. All films featured the environment to some degree, some emphasized the contours of a human’s spirit. The group was a subset of the shorts screened in Telluride at the MountainFilm Festival over Memorial Day weekend, and you can find a comprehensive list of those films here.

It should be obvious I really enjoy and appreciate the types of shorts shown at geography based film festivals such as Mountainfilm, Banff Mountain FF, San Francisco Int’l Ocean FF, etc. So, below I’ve listed a selection of those screened at MountainFilm Mill Valley with links to make it easy for them to be seen by more folks including you. Those I found especially worthy are denoted with an asterisk (*). Since films mentioned have gone through 3 filters – Mountainfilm itself, Mill Valley, and myself – they will be, hopefully, worth some of your time.

Kicking things off, Opening Night’s feature, Unbranded, was accompanied by two very different shorts, the humorous Nature RX (1.5 min) and the heartwarming Denali*, a

Denali and his guardian, Ben

moving 8 minute autobiographical-like tribute by and to man’s best friend.

As one of Wally’s two very fond guardians, and as some readers may justifiably surmise, Denali struck quite a cord with me.

Below and in a forthcoming post on Mill Valley’s shorts, I cluster a selection of the films in a way that may help the reader zero in on subjects of interest.

Starting up on the mountains, our first group of films involve SKIING:

Said to be hailed by some as one of the “most cinematically profound ski movies ever made,” Afterglow – Lightsuit Segment* is certainly a fresh, unusual take on downhill. Filmed at night at Alaska’s Alyeska resort, it was a crowd favorite at Mountainfilm and has 10,000+ likes at Vimeo. I hope you see for yourself. 3 minutes.

Ruapehu, 9 min. Culture & history on the North Island New Zealand along with scenes and skiing.

Sundog* is 5 minutes of Argentinian mountains, man, and a dog. Very well done and not at all redundant with Denali.

Of course there were shorts on CLIMBING:

The Black Binder*, 7. Analogous to Monet’s many treatments of the same subject such as haystacks and water lilies, Josh takes different routes on his climbs up a wall in Black Canyon. One of my favorites.

The Force highlights of one adventuresome spirit’s 10 years in Patagonia climbing and experiencing the place. By Patagonia, 18 min.